


I See You

by lanomano



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Happy Halloween, Horror???, M/M, Supernatural Elements, heavily inspired by Mieruko-chan and Fuan no tane
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 06:49:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21239930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanomano/pseuds/lanomano
Summary: Seungcheol can see things other people can’t. Sometimes they lead him to good things. Sometimes.





	I See You

He’s nine years old when he starts seeing them around the house. Seungcheol can recall their washed-out figures, small and just barely discernible against the wallpaper and yet he knows they’re there. He tells his mom as such and tries to convince her he’s not playing pretend, but all he gets for his efforts are a few pats on the head and a new nightlight. If anything, the nightlight only further reveals their movements in his bedroom as he was supposedly sleeping; darting under the bookcase, hiding behind his closet, and climbing up the curtains. They are vaguely humanoid in shape, but the outlines were so blurry they could have been anything.

The small figures bustling around his room aren’t the issue though. It’s more to do with the larger one standing at the foot of his bed, its torso extending so high he wonders if it surpasses the ceiling. He thinks it moves closer every time he closes his eyes, and if he keeps silent enough, he thinks he can hear it whispering. When he drifts off for a few moments and opens his eyes again, he notices that the figure now had shoulders, and realizes with trepidation that the two pinpricks of white on his ceiling were not from the nightlight.

Seungcheol does not sleep well that night, and the nightlight is retired quickly in exchange for letting him sleep in his parent’s bed. Seungcheol maintains this habit far into his teenage years until his father complains that he takes up too much space.

His older brother, Seungmin, teases him about it up to this day, but Seungcheol would like to think it helped him get closer to his parents.

Eventually, Seungcheol learns to ignore them, as they have yet to harm him beyond literally scaring him shitless while he’s in the bathroom. He doesn’t know if they know that he knows they exist, and he doesn’t want to find out. He’s twenty-four now, and the fact that he’s been granted this ungodly ability to see things no one else does hasn’t changed.

His family runs a fairly successful barbecue-slash-hotpot restaurant that’s located on the first floor of the building they live in. It’s good enough that a few tourists who visit Daegu like to mention it in their travel blogs to put themselves apart from the “other” travel blogs, as they like to put it. Seungcheol didn’t really care as long as they brought in more customers.

As a teenager who still occasionally slept in his parents’ bed, he worked there as a waiter during the weekends. When he got old enough, his dad taught him how to butcher a whole chicken and how to fillet a fish. Seungcheol is proud to say he was able to pick up those skills with ease. What he’s not proud of is the fact that he was demoted to a waiter again after refusing to get the raw chicken and fish from the freezer himself.

There was a man wearing a pig mask in the corner, you see, with the eyes gouged out and with deep lacerations all over its body. The mouth was opened, displaying several rows of tiny, human teeth. Judging from his dad’s face when he opened the freezer, it’s something exclusive for Seunghceol’s eyes only. Seungcheol maintained a stoic expression as he walked in and opened one of the coolers, only to be faced with the curled-up body of _something_ within it. His body tenses as the thing writhes and turns its pale head up to reveal nothing but a vertical slit down the center for what may have been a mouth once.

“What’s taking you so long, Cheol?” his dad calls from outside. The sound of his kitchen knife against the cutting board is clearly heard.

The person in the pig mask clacks its teeth, as if responding to the thuds of the knife. “I’m not sure which chicken to pick,” he says. It’s not entirely false; the thing is obstructing his view.

“Pick the one with the earliest expiration date,” his father says. “We can’t have any food wastage going around here.”

“Okay.” His hand hovers over the cooler. The thing in it sits up and puts a gangly hand on the lid. Seungcheol picks the chicken at the top of the pile and shuts it. The thing’s head phases through the lid, and it looks up at Seungcheol while its slit widens. Seungcheol walks out of the freezer with the fucking chicken clutched between his hands and closes the door behind him. He rests his back on the door for a moment to control his heart rate.

His dad stops in his chopping to acknowledge him. “Final—are you alright, Cheol?”

“Huh?” The person in the pig mask is directly on the other side of the door.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Somehow, the clacking gets faster.

“Ah, I just got really cold, is all.” His dad scoffs while he lays out strips of meat on their trays. The conversational buzz from the customers outside becomes clearer, and Seungcheol can hear his mom humming in the back tending to the vegetables.

“I told you to hurry up in there. Send these trays out, would you?” Seungcheol pushes off the door and does as he’s told, because any number of tiny humanoid figures is better than whatever that was.

He regrets his internal thoughts very quickly when he goes to take orders from the table who flags him down. The two boys seated in the booth are around his age, and the one with long hair seems familiar.

“Pork belly, please,” one of them says.

“Beef short ribs,” goes the other.

“**_Leg_**,” goes the third occupant who goes unnoticed by the other two. It stares at Seungcheol expectantly, if he had to label the look it casts. It sits inside the table, so the only things he sees are its twisted neck and blown up head. Its mouth is stretched far too wide across its cheeks, wispy black hair laying limps against its scalp.

“Okay,” Seungcheol lets out a trembling sigh, “Pork belly and beef short ribs. Is that all?”

“Yup,” the long-haired one confirms. His actual companion considers something for a while.

“Are you okay?”

“Pardon?”

The boy furrows his brows. “You look sick is all. Should you really be working right now?” Seungcheol wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. Does he really?

“I guess I’m a bit tired,” he admits. When he turns back to them, the third occupant has disappeared.

The boy pulls up a chair from a vacant table. “You can join us if you want. Jeonghan would’t mind, would you?” he asks the long-haired boy. Jeonghan gives him a deadpanned look that breaks when the other boy smiles innocently.

Jeonghan sighs, “Fine. I expect a discount though.”

The other boy's name is Jisoo, but Jeonghan likes referring to him by his English name, Joshua. Seungcheol finds out that the two go to the same high school as he does. They’re neighbors and have practically grown up together. He also finds out that the third occupant did not disappear, but rather hid itself under the table. He discovers this when he bends down to pick up some fallen change.

All in all, he had an okay day.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone is interested in reading Mieruko-chan, just be warned that it’s very fanservice-y in the first three chapters, especially in the third. Feel free to skip that one. The fanservice drops off drastically after the third chapter though.


End file.
